New Haven, Conn., Jul 30, 2007 / 10:02 am (CNA).- In her inaugural address upon assuming the presidency of India, the country’s first female leader called for an end to abortions based on sex preference. India is one of the countries with the highest number of abortions of female babies.

President Pratibha Patil, 72, said that for her, "Empowerment of women is particularly important to me as I believe this leads to the empowerment of the nation."

She noted the urgency of banishing “malnutrition, social evils, infant mortality and female feticide."

LifeSite.net denounced that shortly after Patil’s speech, police discovered 30 bags full of dismembered babies outside an abortion clinic in Eastern India. Specialists believe that the remains were of baby girls, killed because of the preference for male children in India. Despite the fact that sonograms and sex-selective abortion are illegal, the law is rarely enforced.

In 2006, researchers found that approximately 500,000 unborn female babies were aborted each year in India. They stated that if this number has remained consistent since the introduction of ultrasound, then an estimated that 10 million female babies have been murdered in the past 20 years.